Warfare, police activity, counter-terrorism and similar situations can subject individuals to significant risks of injury. An important aspect of such situations is information gathering. Accurate and timely information can help to reduce the risk of personnel injury, avoid escalation of an incident, or provide a tactical advantage in a conflict situation. Unfortunately, gathering information presents its own risks. Reconnaissance personnel sent into undercover situations or war zones face the risk of detection, capture, injury, and the like.
One significant improvement in surveillance techniques is the use of unmanned robotic devices for information gathering. Using a remotely-controlled robotic device can, for example, help to avoid the need to expose individuals to a dangerous environment. Robotic devices have been used with success in defusing bombs, searching for earthquake survivors, and space exploration. Unmanned aerial vehicles have achieved great success in wartime scenarios. Unmanned aerial vehicles allow surveillance of a battlefield area without requiring exposure of a pilot to threats.
While successful, unmanned aerial vehicles have a number of limitations. For example, aerial vehicles tend to perform best at monitoring environments that are visible from an aerial vantage point, and therefore have difficulty observing concealed (e.g., under thick vegetation), indoor, or underground activities. Unmanned aerial vehicles also tend to be quite expensive and require specially-trained personnel to operate.
One alternative to information gathering using unmanned aerial vehicles is the placement of networks of fixed-position information sensors (e.g., intrusion detection systems, roadside traffic monitors, and the like). Fixed-position information sensors can be inexpensive, but must be placed into the environment to be monitored. Accordingly, installation of a fixed-position information-gathering network can subject individuals to undesired risks.
While ground robotic devices offer the potential to address some of these shortcomings, to date, little use has been made of ground robotic devices for information gathering. One challenge in the use of ground robotic devices is placement (and removal) of the devices into an environment to be monitored, particularly if covert surveillance is desired.